The Perfect Shave, Really?

Choose To Shave Simply

If you follow the shaving industry like I do, you can’t go very far without running into ‘The Art of Manliness Shaving’ approach which includes a pre-shave oil, shaving cream, applying that shaving cream with a brush, and then aftershave. Well, I felt obligated to give it a go, after all… maybe there is something to it. After all, they call it the perfect shave!

So when it came time to buy all of the required products, I opted to not spend the $100 on the full kit (are you f*#king kidding me?) but instead purchased the ‘Tester Kit’ for $25 at: http://www.theartofshaving.com/shop/shaving-products/shaving-kits. Without offending those of you who go through the multi-stage process of pre-shave oil, shaving cream, aftershaves, etc., I must say that my experience with the whole process was time consuming, expensive, and all together unnecessary. Here is why the Art of Manliness Shaving is exhausting:

1) It’s More Than Four Steps: They should really call it a 12-step program, not only because whoever subscribes to such a process really has a problem, but it simply takes so much time to:

Get all of the supplies out in front of you

Wet your face

Apply the pre-shave oil

Wash your hands

Open the shaving cream

Get the brush covered in the shaving cream

Lather up your face

Rinse the brush

Shave

Rinse all of the remaining shaving cream off of your face

Apply the aftershave

Clean up your mess of multiple open containers and put everything away

This whole process took me about 8 minutes instead of 2 minutes… shaving takes long enough as it is, right? Why prolong it for no better results?

2) Costs More: The tiny Art of Manliness shaving sample kit I purchased was probably a month’s supply, at best. That means that a year’s worth of the stuff would set you back about $300. Ha! What suckers are paying that when a bottle of TICO* only costs $20 and can last for nearly a year depending on how often you shave? Not to mention that all of the equipment that comes with such practice is so very bulky and all in all it takes up more room than the rest of my entire bathroom supplies!

Now, admittedly, I am a compulsive minimalist, and you can call me crazy, but if I can achieve a better shave with 1/5th of the materials and for 1/20th of the cost, you are going to have to be a damn good salesman to change my thinking…

3) Too Much Stuff: Most guys don’t like to have a bunch of “stuff”, the quick and simple way wins every time. Not only does it take up a lot of space in my bathroom, but it’s not ideal for traveling either.

The shave was all right, I admit. But when you shave with shave oil alone, your face is left moisturized and I found that the aftershave did not leave the face feeling as good as it did with the oil treatment. Now I will also admit that when it came time to give away the undesired goods left over from this little experiment, I couldn’t find any takers. Maybe because everyone I know already uses TICO*… But my experiment and shared results are fair and accurate nonetheless. In the end it simply takes much longer to do, is way more expense, and takes up much more room. I guess that’s two more points for Occam’s razor… pun intended.